Wikenigma – an Encyclopedia of Unknowns

Related:<p><i>Wikenigma – an encyclopedia of scientific questions with no known answers</i> - <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=34181165">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=34181165</a> - Dec 2022 (11 comments)<p><i>Wikenigma is an encyclopedia for topics with unknown answers</i> - <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=32210258">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=32210258</a> - July 2022 (72 comments)<p>(Reposts are fine after a year or so; links to past threads are just to satisfy extra-curious readers)

Hit the random button a few times and every article was bird-related.<p>Every time I see a bird up close I’m struck by how weird they are, but I didn’t realise they were quite so mysterious.

I wonder why Travelling Salesman Problem is included but not other NP-hard problems.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;wikenigma.org.uk&#x2F;content&#x2F;computer_science&#x2F;the_ravelling_salesman_problem" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;wikenigma.org.uk&#x2F;content&#x2F;computer_science&#x2F;the_ravell...</a><p>(The URL really says &quot;ravelling&quot; and not &quot;travelling&quot;. Maybe this article was hastily added)

Does it have an entry for what we don&#x27;t know we don&#x27;t know?

I was thinking about this concept yesterday, in the context of AI automation in the sciences.<p>It is difficult for anyone in any scientific field to know where the big knowledge gaps are. Yet I can plausibly imagine a method whereby LLMs could identify research gaps, particularly when supported by scientists in the field.<p>In a near world where human scientists and AI collaborate much more closely on semiautomated scientific knowledge production, finding and filling knowledge gaps might be an approach for guiding work.

I was surprised to find out that we apparently don&#x27;t have a definitive explanation for how hangovers work: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;wikenigma.org.uk&#x2F;content&#x2F;medicine&#x2F;diseases&#x2F;g-l&#x2F;hangover" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;wikenigma.org.uk&#x2F;content&#x2F;medicine&#x2F;diseases&#x2F;g-l&#x2F;hango...</a>

1400 articles, spanning math to medicine to biology to archeology and more…this is a tiny sip of an ocean of unknowns.

The “random article” link is irresistible

Apparently philosophers don&#x27;t know what holes are:<p>&gt; <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;wikenigma.org.uk&#x2F;content&#x2F;philosophy&#x2F;holes" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;wikenigma.org.uk&#x2F;content&#x2F;philosophy&#x2F;holes</a>

I wonder if there is an ethical limit to some categories of knowledge. There are surely some sociological phenomena which are currently unexplained, but could potentially be explained by, say, incredibly invasive monitoring of peoples’ lives, but which we would probably rather remain unexplained than go down that route.

This is super fun!<p>But I&#x27;m not super clear why it&#x27;s a site of its own, rather than a list on Wikipedia?<p>Surely it&#x27;s a list as serious as:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;List_of_common_misconceptions" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;List_of_common_misconceptions</a><p>Or is there something less objective about it?

Seems like the server is down. Or OP has reached their bandwidth, hence the website not accessible

We just don&#x27;t know is what I think Feynman was getting at in his criticism of physics teaching and how it tries to leverage the nth layer and n-1th layer to explain actions in the n+1 layer.

so basically one of the articles talks about why there should be an equal amount of matter and antimatter in the universe but in reality we havent been able to find antimatter, is it possible that our entire observable universe is a small area with matter rich concentration and there exists a much much bigger structure of the order of 1 decillion light years where random areas have concentrations of matter and antimatter and we are unfortunately stuck in the area with matter?

bandwidth limit exceeded :&lt;